This invention relates generally to containers, and more particularly pertains to a reinforced collapsible paperboard hogshead for use in the handling of tobacco.
As is well known in the tobacco trade, hogsheads have universally long been used as the means for supporting a large quantity of tobacco for shipment. In earlier days, such hogsheads were usually constructed from wooden staves that were generally assembled into the cylindrical configuration by means of straps, thereby undertaking the appearance of the standard wooden barrel. When in assembled form, these containers are disposed for holding an ample quantity of tobacco, generally after it has been cured, and hogsheads of this type may customarily support anywhere from 1000 to 1300 pounds of prized tobacco.
To hold this much weight of tobacco, in the hogshead container, requires its very dense compaction within the same, and as is also well known in the art, the concept of prizing, or pressing, a large quantity of the tobacco into the hogshead generally through use of a hydraulic press is the procedure frequently used. After such tobacco had been prized, which usually occured after its sale at an auction, such compacted quantity of tobacco, contained within its hogshead, would then be shipped to a distant location for its further processing into cigarettes, pipe tobacco, or the like, such type shipments not only being made domestically, but additionally to manufactures located abroad.
For the foregoing reasons, tobacco hogsheads generally are constructed into the circular form, since the heavy forces of the cutomarily employed hydraulic pressure, sometimes in excess of 10,000 pounds per square inch, as impressed upon the contained tobacco during prizing, would have a tendency to cause bulging and distorting of its container if it was in any shape other than the circular form. Older style tobacco hogsheads constructed from a plurality of wooden staves that are linked together into the circular form are shown in the earlier U.S. Pat. No. 1,477,105, in addition to U.S. Pat. No. 2,514,829.
Of more recent vintage has been the construction of tobacco hogsheads from wound paperboard material, generally wound into the circular form, and the U.S. Pat. No. 3,291,362 discloses one such hogshead being formed of fiberboard, although the discussions in this patent describe that the use of a cylindrical paper body for a hogshead, at the time of the development of the therein disclosed fiberboard hogshead, only suggested paper type containers in the proposed form.
The patent to Dunlap, U.S. Pat. No. 3,064,870, discloses a collapsible container being formed from spirally wound paper tubes for use as a tobacco hogshead. Spirally wound tubes of this nature, while being an improvement over the aforesaid type of fiberboard formed hogshead yet contains inherent drawbacks in that spiral wound tubes generally are of much lesser strength than convolutely would tubes, and furthermore, their configuration is limited specifically to the circular form due to the impossibility of spirally winding such tubes to any other shape, such as the noncircular configuration.
The present invention comprises an improvement over these earlier style of hogsheads, as either formed from wooden staves or spirally wound paperboard, and essentially incorporates the use of convolutely wound paper tubes manufactured to a thickness that allows for their structural integrity even when subjected to the excessive pressures of tobacco prizing, but which can be collapsed into its separable components as when it is desired to return the same to its site of use for further reusage.
The principal object of this invention is to provide a convolutely wound paper hogshead that is of sufficient strength to be used in conjunction with tobacco prizing, but yet contains reinforcing members that further insure against its failure, and even allows for its collapse for reshipment and eventual reuse.
Another object of this invention is the provision of a convolutely wound paperboard hogshead that contains strategically located reinforcing members that insure repeated usage of its various components for tobacco prizing, storage, and shipment.
A further object of this invention is to provide a unique hinge means that cooperates with the reinforcing means of a paper wound hogshead, and which allows for the quick dismantling of its various components for removal of any transported tobacco.
An additional object of this invention is to provide a paper wound tube that is cut into separable half portions of a circular hogshead, which components can subsequently be collapsed for return shipment in a minimum of space.
An additional object of this invention is to provide a unique reinforcing member or stave that contains its own integral fastening means to provide for reinforcement of the hogshead at the location of its line of separation, and there provide the necessary structure for cooperating with the hinge means for retaining the hogshead together, particularly during tobacco prizing.
A further object of the invention is to provide a unique hinge means that can cooperate with either the reinforcing stave, or insert within a slot of the paperboard body of the hogshead itself so as to insure retention of its separable halves together particularly during tobacco prizing.
Another feature of this invention is to provide a hogshead made up of separable components that may be easily assembled for quick usage, but yet promptly disassembled upon reaching the location where its contained tobacco is to be used.
A further object of the invention is to provide a tobacco hogshead formed from convolutely wound kraft paper and which therefore can be constructed into various shapes, in cross section, other than the circular form.
These and other objects will become more apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the summary of this invention, in addition to reviewing the description of the preferred embodiment in view of its drawings.